


How we kept going

by QuintanaofCharyn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, he hates studying why would he do that no i'm not going to do that to him, he's chilling at home with tea, it will also include stuff about Hogwarts, it's harry, my babies have all got trauma but we're gonna work through it y'all, of course Harry is not going back to Hogwarts for his seventh year, this is going to be multiple chapters!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:40:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25398565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuintanaofCharyn/pseuds/QuintanaofCharyn
Summary: This is my very first work! Please let me know what you think in the comments. Would love to hear from you! I hope you and your family and friends are all doing well, and that you are staying safe.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter, Seamus Finnigan/Dean Thomas, because they're already basically married in the books
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. Dirigible Plum Tea

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first work! Please let me know what you think in the comments. Would love to hear from you! I hope you and your family and friends are all doing well, and that you are staying safe.

Harry took the kettle off the stove as it began to whine and poured himself a cup. It was probably his fourteenth that day, but it was necessary if he was going to make a dent in the vast collection of exotic and limited edition teas that sat in the kitchen cupboards. His friends always brought food or drinks or books when they came to stay, and he’d somehow accumulated more tea than he was sure any person could get through in a lifetime. There was pomegranate tea from Hermione (“my Mum sent me a truckload for Christmas”), peppermint tea from Ron that somehow tasted exactly like Christmas Eve, spiced honey tea from Ginny (by way of Bill, who’d developed a liking for it while in Egypt), and Dirigible Plum tea from Luna. Nobody could drink it unless Luna made it, because only she seemed able to create a reasonably appetising concoction with the mixture.

Harry picked up his mug of chamomile tea and wandered into the ‘informal’ sitting room. It was ridiculous how many rooms Grimmauld Place had (and how many rooms he was sure Sirius’ mother’s was doing her best to keep hidden even now from him) but he felt most comfortable in the areas that clearly hadn’t been intended to house politicians and foreign dignitaries. 

He settled down on the chair beside the fireplace (muttering a quick Incendio to bring the stacked wood roaring back to life) and placed his mug of tea beside him on the table. Where once he would have collapsed on the cushions, only to have a cloud of dust blow up around him, now the room was clean and had no trace of the old musty smell. 

Kreacher had brought various friends from Hogwarts in the months after the Battle to the house. Even after Harry had freed him, he still remained staunchly proud of his role as House Elf to the Black Family. But he couldn’t bear to introduce any of his friends to a place that wasn’t entirely up to his usual standards. After Harry had given him permission to bring anyone he liked over - “Kreacher, you’re free, you don’t have to ask me for permission for anything anymore.” “It is Mr. Potter’s house, sir, and I will not be wanting to have guests over without the permission of the owner” - he’d spring into action almost turned the house upside down trying to make it acceptable for visitors.

Harry stared into the flames. He’d thought of getting a TV for the house, but he wasn’t even sure where to begin when it came to hooking up electrics in a building that practically thrummed with magic. It would be a challenge Hermione might be up to, but when he did manage to speak to her he usually got barely-intelligible rants about her latest NEWT assignments. This was not the year to be bothering her about anything but ways to improve her grades.

Instead he stared into the flames. He thought of his godfather, who used to talk to him through the fireplace in the Gryffindor Common Room. He remembered the blue and green flames from the driftwood fire at Fleur and Bill’s house, and the sea lavender that would now be blooming beside Dobby’s grave on the cliff outside. The Fiendyre that consumed decades of hidden and forgotten objects in a room that had once been a safe haven. 

He closed his eyes. Took a sip of his tea. It helped. It shouldn’t, it was too much for tea to do anything, but it helped. He knew the others didn’t understand - Mrs. Weasley constantly tried to have him move into the Burrow, Hermione didn’t think it was healthy he’d moved back here, even Hagrid had offered him a bed in his Hut. But it was quiet here. And after the life he’d lived, and the battles he’d fought, quiet was a blessing he hadn’t really thought was meant for him.

Only Ron seemed to understand some part of what he felt, and he was the one who always came to check up on him every few days. It was almost fun, sometimes, to walk around London with him and to blend in with all the muggles whose lives had continued heedless through the bloody struggle that was the Second Wizarding War. None of them looked strangely at Harry, or Ron. Their dogged determination to walk to work or the shops or to school or whatever it was they were doing was oddly soothing. The world goes on. The world goes on. And so do I.

Harry heard the doorbell ring and immediately lurched to his feet as he heard the familiar screeching of Walburga Black ring through the house. He splashed tea over his trousers and fumbled for his wand to dry them, when he heard quick footsteps sprinting through the halls. 

Harry swung upon his door just in time to spot Kreacher bodily charging at the portrait of his former mistress and pulling the curtains tightly shut. Mrs. Black’s cries stopped. Kreacher allowed himself to drop to the ground from the curtains he’d been hanging onto, and pulled himself up smartly, dusting off his clothes. He was wearing a waistcoat, a tie, one converse trainer, one child’s size brogue, and a leather apron that had been cut to suit his height. Harry reasoned that Dobby’s unique dress sense was having an impact on the wider House Elf community.

Kreacher seemed to sense Harry standing at the top of the stairs, because he turned to face him. ‘Will I be getting the door Mr. Potter, or will you?’

‘It isn’t one of your friends, Kreacher?’ Harry asked, drying his clothes off and trying to drain his mug at the same time.

’No, Mr. Potter. Kreacher’s friends know better than to ring the doorbell.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Harry said, wondering if House Elves had some kind of telepathic communication in close quarters. ‘Thanks then Kreacher, I’ll get it,’ he said, walking down the stairs and resolving to ask Hermione about it after her NEWT’s were done. 

He placed the cup on some priceless antique cabinet by the door, and tapped his wand against the various locks that ran down the door. They clicked and turned until finally the doorknob shone briefly with a yellow hue. He turned it and opened the door.

On his front doorstep was a mess of pale yellow hair over a strange purple and red dress that looked as if it had been sewn in the later 1700’s, and then scavenged and reworked in the 1970’s. The woman at his doorstep was humming slightly, one of her hands raised to her face as if she was chewing on her fingernails.

‘Luna?’ Harry ventured.

Luna turned to him and her eyes widened, almost as if she’d forgotten he was there. 

‘Harry!’ she said, her mouth stretching into a wide grin, and she pitched forward to pull him into a hug.

Harry hugged her back instinctively and laughed softly into her hair. She was wearing an array of clips in it, he now saw, some with her beloved dried Dirigible Plums glued onto them.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked as she pulled away. Behind her, he saw a great array of paper bags and packages stacked on the front stoop, and very much in danger of tumbling down the steps and onto the pavement.

For a moment Luna’s face seemed troubled, and he was about to reassure her that she was always welcome at Grimmauld Place. But then her face cleared and he realised that she was probably so lost in thought that she’d had to muddle through to figure out what her intention had been in coming here.

‘I brought the music tune thing,’ she said, lifting up a leather case in her right hand. ‘So we can play music tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ Harry asked as he picked up the bags and parcels at the front door and brought them in.

‘Hello Kreacher!’ Luna called up the stairs. Somewhere a pot banged against a spoon and she took that as a response. 

‘Sorry about him,’ Harry told her, pulling the door shut behind him. 

‘Oh, you don’t have to apologise. It’s very nice of him to do that when I come. It’s like my own little greeting,’ Luna explained cheerfully. 

Harry marvelled at that for a short moment, and then returned to his previous question. ‘What was that about tonight?’

‘We’re having a party,’ Luna told him, as if it was a universally known fact that she nevertheless forgave him for forgetting.

‘We are?’ Harry asked. Luna pulled her wand out from behind her ear, and picked one of the parcels out of his hands. She tapped it and the brown wrapping paper turned a sudden fluorescent pink, and then whizzed off somewhere in the house. 

‘It’s Spring Solstice,’ she told him breezily, taking the other package he was holding and tapping it with her wand. Harry picked up a bag from the ground and held it out to her. Luna smiled in thanks.

‘Mother always had a party on Spring Solstice,’ she said. ‘And I haven’t had one in ages. So we’re going to have one, and you have a house that everyone can come to.’

‘What about your house?’ he asked her. Luna cocked her head at him curiously. ’Not that you can’t have it here, obviously,’ he told her. ‘Just-’

‘My father isn’t coming,’ she said by way of explanation, sending the last bag flying somewhere else in the house. She watched it go, suddenly quite still in the hallway.

Harry pulled her back to him and rested his head against hers. Luna settled her face against his chest and they stood there for a moment without speaking. It had been difficult, he knew, between Luna and her father when she’d discovered what he’d done to try and have her returned to him. Harry was long past holding grudges - particularly against people trying to protect their children - but evidently Luna felt differently. She’d stayed at the Burrow and Grimmauld Place before term went back, and then returned to Hogwarts without speaking to Xenophilius once. 

After a few minutes, Luna let out a deep breath and Harry pulled away. Luna’s face was dry and had the same quiet contemplative look she usually had. 

‘Right,’ Harry said, clapping his hands together as if that would somehow help. ‘Who’s coming to this party then?’


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang (all the gang) get together for a shindig at Grimmauld Place. There is happenings at Hogwarts, which are not particularly pleasing to Harry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, reading Deathly Hallows for the first time:  
> George: ‘I’m saintlike Fred. I’m holey’  
> Me: this is peak humour, nothing will ever top this, everyone go home  
> Me, more than a decade later: I must make my own ear joke
> 
> (Also I'm sorry this was so far behind the last one!)

A couple of hours later, the house was filled with chatter, music, and the smell of some extraordinary concoction being developed in the kitchen. For once, it was not being developed by Mrs. Weasley, who was currently at Shell Cottage battling Fleur’s maman over the best ways to tend to an expectant mother. 

(From what Harry had heard from Ginny, Fleur seemed to be doing quite well and had managed thus far to stay out of the way of the two spirited witches who were doing their utmost to take over the cottage.)

Oliver Wood, of all people, seemed to have the most aptitude for cooking, although he was fond of listing the health benefits of everything he dished out. 

‘This one has Wiggentree extract, which is excellent for Beaters because it helps with upper arm strength,’ he was saying very seriously now to Neville, who’d never in his life swung a Beater’s bat. ‘Not to mention it has twice the antioxidants you might get in an ordinary cup of green tea. I’ve been trying to get the coach to introduce it as part of our official diet regimens, but so far I’ve had some difficulty-‘ Oliver abruptly stopped this explanation because Fred had somehow managed to throw a Shut-Up-Percy in a superb manoeuvre up the stairs and directly into his face. 

[The Shut-Up-Percy was the working name for a new Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes device the twins had cooked up. It was designed to stick the mouth closed of whoever happened to be on the receiving end of one in the face. They’d yet to find a willing test subject, but it had proved a far more effective counter-measure to Percy’s dinner-table ramblings than any of their traditional hexes.]

Dean and Seamus were sitting cross-legged next to each other on the floor with Luna, playing a Muggle card game. Dean was destroying the other two, who couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that the cards would not, at any point, explode in their hands or emit fireworks. While Dean and Seamus had always had a tendency of finishing each other’s sentences through their years at Hogwarts, Harry had been surprised to learn that Luna and Dean had forged a new closeness. In the aftermath of the Malfoy Manor, Harry hadn’t exactly been conscious of any developing relationships amongst the former captives - too focused on what they’d lost and how much they still had to do.

Harry tapped Ginny’s head. She was lying against him on the couch, her head against his shoulder, reading the latest edition of The Prophet. She was slowly but determinately drawing moustaches on every picture of a Ministry employee she could find in it.

She looked up at Harry’s touch and he pointed toward the three of them by the fire. ‘Interesting,’ he said.

‘She can do better,’ Ginny said blithely and Harry laughed in spite of himself.

‘C’mon, Dean’s a good bloke,’ he said.

Ginny looked up at him with a thoughtful expression. ‘Actually, you know what? You’re right. Perhaps I picked the wrong one out of the two of you.’ She looked between the two of them quizzically with her chin on her fist, until Harry kissed her 

The doorbell rang and there was a sudden screech as the twins leapt from their seats and tore down the stairs. Ginny raced after them with such speed that she accidentally elbowed Harry in the stomach. Harry had given them permission to use as many Shut-Up-Percy’s as they liked on Walburga Black’s portrait, and the three of them had a fierce competition to see who could silence her first.

Harry, slightly winded, walked down the stairs (ducking one of the fizzing orange and blue grenades thrown with expert precision by Ginny) and pulled open the door. Hermione was standing on the doorstep looking more flustered than usual.

‘Oh Harry!’ she cried, jumping up to pull him into a hug. Harry laughed and held her to him. 

‘Are you alright?’ she whispered into his ear. He nodded and felt some small tension in her relax. She pulled away and he moved some stray curls that had swept across her face. ‘And you?’ he asked.

‘Oh I’m so sorry! I forgot about the doorbell.’ Nearby, they could hear Walburga shrieking, although seemingly somewhat muffled by the twins invention. Hermione pulled herself and her evidently hefty bag through the door. ‘I’m just so caught up in this translation for my latest Runes Assignment that I wasn’t thinking.’ Harry saw in her hands she held Advanced Rune Translation, and was using a broken quill as a bookmark. ‘Professor Burbrank has us looking at this passage from a new archaeological site in Wales, but it doesn’t seem to follow any of the rules that we’ve been taught based on other sites, which could indicate that it’s an entirely separate dialect, but might also mean that I’m not reading it correctly-‘

‘Hermione!’

Harry looked up to see Ron bound down the stairs and pull Hermione up into his arms. She squealed and turned pink when he spun her through the air and kissed her. Her brown curls seemed to bounce slightly higher in the air as she looked up into his eyes, as if she was floating on a cloud.

Harry pulled them into a rough hug, being sure to bump their heads together. 

‘Ah, Harry!’ Ron said.

‘Serves you right for being all google-eyed in my house. If I wanted to feel nauseous I’d be cooking dinner for myself.’

‘Harry, you really should learn to cook more nutritious food for yourself,’ Hermione admonished as the three of them began to walk up the stairs (still ducking projectiles thrown by assorted Weasley siblings). ‘Especially considering how often you’re staying here, you need to be keeping up with all your food groups.’

‘I am perfectly capable of cooking a Michelen-star meal, Hermione. Do you think the Dursleys would have kept me around if I wasn’t able to serve them a five-course banquet?’

‘What’s a Mitchell-in star?’ Ron asked, befuddled, and Hermione began to explain as they dropped on the couch Harry had been sitting on with Ginny before.

Hermione had brought a wealth of sugar-free chocolate eggs, courtesy of her parents. They’d moved back to Britain, and although they’d retired from dentistry, they were still fastidious in ensuring proper dental health for their daughter and her friends. She put them on the table in the middle of the room, amidst Oliver’s canapés, a cake bought by Dean at the local supermarket, and a variety of suspicious Weasley’s Wizards Wheezes which may or may not have been edible.

‘How are you Hermione?’ Luna asked brightly. Dean was desperately trying to get her to cover the cards in her hand, which were clearly visible. Seamus was peering at them carefully, comparing them to his own.

‘Oh, I’m very well Luna,’ Hermione told her. She was trying to subtly pull a book out of her satchel, and which Ron kept quietly vanishing every time she did so. ‘How are your classes going?’

‘Very well,’ Luna said. ‘David Schmidt managed to turn all the desks into flamingos, so our exam was cancelled.’

‘Oh, that was your class?’ Hermione said, full of concern at the fact that an exam had been cancelled.

‘Yes. Rumour is that someone put him up to it,’ Luna said innocently.

‘That wasn’t bloody me!’ Ginny roared up the stairs.

‘I didn’t say it was,’ Luna said benignly.

‘Oi!’ Ginny’s flame-red swung through the doorway ahead of her. ‘David lost a bet fair and square, but, I didn’t tell him he had to use that spell in class, he was supposed to use it in the Great Hall!’

‘Ah, well geography has never been poor David’s strength,’ Luna said, tapping her cards with her wand to make the markings vanish. Seamus was practically in her lap trying desperately to figure out if she had an advantage over him.

‘Doesn’t help that half the classrooms are still rubble,’ Dean said, slapping Seamus.

Luna laid a hand gently on Dean’s knee and he looked up to see everyone looking at the floor, suddenly very quiet.

‘Sorry,’ he said, looking at Luna. She gave him a soft smile, and something in Harry’s gut twisted slightly at it.

‘It’s alright,’ Fred said, now at the doorway beside his sister. ‘Bout time someone else was the embarrassment at a dinner party. George and I have been holding the mantle for too long on our own.’

‘Burden of ruling, it is,’ his twin called up the stairs.

‘Heavy is the head, eh George?’

‘Aye, that’s why I had to get the ear removed, got too much hanging over me as it is,’ came the reply.

‘They’re still clearing it?’ Harry asked. It had been months since the battle, and it had taken six months for everyone to return for the school year proper. He’d assumed that most of the damage must have been done away with; his friends certainly hadn’t mentioned that anything might still be lying in ruins.

Ginny had sat down at the floor beside the couch, leaning against his legs. She looked up at him. ’They’ve got most of the castle functional, but there’s some areas that are still cordoned off,’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘The long corridor with all the archaic drawings etched in the stone between McGonagall’s office and the quadrangle is still unusable,’ Ginny said.

‘Oh yeah, our Professor said those are ancient dick jokes,’ Hermione added, her nose now buried in another text, Ancient Runes Made Easy.

‘I FUCKING KNEW IT-’ Fred bellowed before Oliver managed a direct hit with one of his savoury muffins. It landed in Fred’s open mouth and he look incredulously at Oliver as he tried to talk around it.

‘And the kitchens caught fire again last week,’ Ginny continued. ‘Makes the great hall smell like a campfire.’

‘Some of the Herbology greenhouses are still unusable,’ Neville offered. ‘Professor Sprout’s been working on the roots of some of the plants that got released during the Battle.’

‘If another goddamn Screechsnap root slams through the wall of the our Divination classroom again, I’m giving up the subject,’ Seamus said, watching Dean shuffle the cards expertly.

‘Might have to move the classroom out into the forest with Firenze,’ Dean told him. Luna punched him lightly on the shoulder and looked quickly at Harry. He caught her eye.

‘What?’ Harry asked. Luna sighed.

‘Dean’s only joking,’ she said.

’Yeah, divination’s bad enough without having to do it in the bloody Forbidden Forest,’ Ron muttered. ‘Surely they’re not going to put the students through that as well.’

‘Firenze can divine me wherever he likes,’ Pavarti muttered to Lavender, where they sat in the corner of the room half asleep with a tray of cookies between them.

Luna was still looking at Harry, as if something Dean had said might have revealed too much. He raised an eyebrow at her.

‘It’s something McGonagall said,’ Luna told him.

‘Luna-’ Hermione started.

‘About what?’ Harry asked, ignoring Hermione. Ginny exhaled and laid herself down on the floor, holding onto his foot.

‘She said that In the history of Hogwarts, there has never been this level of deliberate destruction.’ 

‘Which only means that this was an unprecedented concentration of dark magic, not anything else,’ Hermione interjected.

‘Ok, I feel like I’m back in class with Professor Binns,’ Harry told them. ‘I know that the battle did damage, I know it was an unprecedented concentration of dark magic, Hermione, I was there. What exactly am I missing?’

‘They’re not sure whether the castle was build to take this kind of damage. Or whether it’s able to withstand it after this many centuries,’ 

‘So what? They going to knock it down and start over?’ Harry laughed.

Hermione didn’t reply. Luna looked down at her hands.

‘They’re going to knock down the castle?’ Harry asked.

Ginny tapped his foot. ‘They’re not knocking it down, they’re just…’ she didn’t seem to know where to go with that thought.

‘How long have they been talking about this?’ he asked, realising his voice was getting louder and not really knowing what to do about it.

’Some of the teachers talk about it between breaks, Harry,’ Hermione said. ‘They’re not exactly announcing it, it’s just - well, it’s all over the place. There’s never been this much damage to the school in all its history.’

‘Which I’m personally offended by, because that battle really kinda took the thunder away from our escapades,’ George added.

‘Damage done by dark magic, then,’ Hermione said. ‘They just don’t want spells that nobody might have seen or catalogued getting caught in the stones or the mortar and sort of…seeping into the foundations over the next century.’

‘Bloody Voldemort and all his cronies kind of put our lake in perspective,’ Fred mused, now having accepted his fate and working his way through the remnants of his muffin.

Harry suddenly felt deflated. He fell back against the cushions and desperately wished he could recede back into them. 

Hogwarts…it couldn’t just be gone. After everything they’d done, after everything they’d lost - surely he couldn’t lose Hogwarts too.

There was a loud ding from the kitchen which sounded less like an oven timer and more like something desperately trying to get its way out of the oven door. Oliver jumped up, almost knocking over Neville on the couch, and raced in to check on whatever was in there.

The conversation started up again, now talking about quite different things - recent quidditch scores, recent football scores (Seamus), and updated bets on which of Oliver’s own concoctions would poison him. 

Harry stood up. Ginny went to get up too, but he shook his head and smiled at her. ‘I just need some air,’ he told her. She frowned at him doubtfully, then jumped up to give him a quick peck on the cheek. He squeezed her hand, and walked out onto the landing. 

Harry climbed up the stairs until he found himself at a familiar door. The name plate still faintly gleamed, the etched word reading Sirius. Harry pushed open the door and walked inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think that Oliver Wood had already exhausted everyone else with his discussion of recipes that best boost the aptitude of quidditch players and went to Neville as a last resort because he’s a Herbologist and that’s the closest Oliver’s gonna find to someone who enjoys cooking because, plants —> vegetables —> cooking.
> 
> also:
> 
> Me: desperately searches up to see what students are in Luna’s year  
> Harry Potter wiki: nothing but Luna, Colin Creevey, and Ginny  
> Me: anyone I make up is canon then
> 
> Please leave comments, kudos, or anything you'd like! I'd love to hear what you have to say, and any thoughts you have on Harry Potter in general. As always if you see any errors, please let me know!

**Author's Note:**

> Saw some things on Tumblr about how Harry and Luna should have ended up together and well...they're right and someone SHOULD say it. So that's what I'm doing here.
> 
> This does not comply with the epilogue, because I don't like it. I may also change some parts of canon because I can do whatever I want.
> 
> Also wanted to look at what happens to all my children after the Battle of Hogwarts, BECAUSE they don't just all go into fantasy land and have their beautiful little heteronormative marriages and never deal with their trauma....'all was well' get away from me these kids all went off and started nuclear families within like five years of the Battle???? What? All of them? in what universe does that make sense? ALL OF THEM??? Nah girl. We doing this better this time. 
> 
> the Author is not dead because her intentions and biases pervade the entire series and there's nothing that we can do about that and we should approach it it with caution and with an intention to understand how those biases have impacted the text BUT ALSO this series belongs to the readers and I will do whatever the HECK I like with it Joanne and be better to my kids than you ever were
> 
> If there are typos in this work please let me know! (but please be kind) happy reading!


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